By the beginning of 1944, victory in Europe was all but assured. The task of diplomacy largely involved efforts to define the structure of the postwar world. Among the salient issues with which allied diplomatists grappled were the fate of the Eastern European nations, the future of Germany, and the establishment of a new international organization to replace the League of Nations. Behind them all was the problem of whether the liberal, democratic West and the Marxist, totalitarian Soviet Union could continue to coexist as allies. Throughout modern history, former Grand Alliances—including the ones that defeated Germany in World War I, Napoleon's France in the early nineteenth century, and Britain in the age of the American Revolution—had come apart once they had served their purpose. President Roosevelt and large numbers of the American people believed that the World War II Grand Alliance would have a different future.

Guiding Questions

Why and how did the United States attempt to preserve the Grand Alliance as American diplomats addressed European issues?

Learning Objectives

Explain the ways in which the USSR, the United States, and Britain differed on the future of Germany.

Explain the differences between the three allies over the future of Eastern Europe, with particular attention to the problem of Poland.

Explain the role played by the establishment of the United Nations in inter-allied diplomacy.

Explain the ways in which the evolving military progress of the war affected diplomatic decision-making.

Explain the American approach to the shaping of the peace.

Background

At the end of 1943, in the wake of the Tehran Conference, the Grand Alliance appeared more united and effective than ever. British efforts to initiate major new military operations in the Mediterranean were rejected by the United States. Instead huge quantities of men and materiel poured into England during the first half of 1944 in preparation for the invasion of Western Europe. On the Eastern Front, the Red Army steadily pushed the Germans back. On June 6, 1944 (D-Day), only a month behind the original schedule, British and American forces landed on the beaches of Normandy. The Soviet Union responded with its own promised major offensive. In late July, American troops liberated Paris.

Military victory also produced difficult problems. Russian troops surged into prewar eastern Poland, and the USSR established a pro-Soviet government at Lublin. When the Red Army massed across the Vistula River from Warsaw, Polish partisans within the old capital began a major uprising against the German occupiers. Realizing that the partisans wanted to reestablish an independent Poland with its 1939 boundaries, Stalin ordered his generals to cease offensive operations. Given free rein by the USSR for two months, the Germans destroyed the uprising.

Further south, the Soviets advanced with much more dispatch. One by one, Germany's satellite allies and puppet regimes in Eastern Europe either surrendered or were overwhelmed. At the end of 1944, most of the region was under firm Soviet military occupation with civilian administrations installed by the Red Army. This situation, if made permanent, would constitute a major affront to the ideals that both American and British leaders had invoked to justify the war. Moreover, it represented a potential threat to Britain's Mediterranean interests.

Conferring with Stalin in Moscow (October, 1944), Churchill proposed the division of southeastern Europe into Soviet and British spheres of influence. Russia would have predominance in Rumania and Bulgaria, the British in Greece, which historically had been an area of British hegemony. The two countries would have joint 50-50 influence in Hungary and Yugoslavia. Stalin quickly accepted the deal. It is unlikely that he ever intended to give the British much of a voice in the 50-50 countries, but he would refrain from sending Soviet troops into Greece, where Britain would establish itself in early 1945. The Churchill-Stalin agreement excluded Poland and Czechoslovakia; scribbled on a piece of note paper, the accord was never formalized. The United States never recognized it. Indeed, it would have been a serious political liability for Roosevelt, campaigning for his fourth term as it was negotiated.

The formal U.S. tool for a new world order was a United Nations Organization, which would replace the old League of Nations and provide an inclusive democratic front for the four great powers that Roosevelt hoped would police the world. It began to take shape at the Dumbarton Oaks conference in Washington, DC (August 21-October 7, 1944), and would become a reality after the end of the war in Europe at the San Francisco conference (April 25-June 26, 1945). The United States invested enormous amounts of hope and moral prestige in the organization. So did much of British public opinion.

Another important aspect of the American postwar design was the establishment of an international monetary system to stabilize major national currencies and thereby facilitate international trade. Along with this, an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development would fund postwar reconstruction and development. These mechanisms were established at the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire in July, 1944. The creations of Dumbarton Oaks and Bretton Woods were institutional representations of a Wilsonian liberal vision that defined peace in terms of democratic nations settling disputes multilaterally and engaging in the business of peaceful trade rather than aggressive war.

A final issue of increasing urgency was the future treatment of Germany. At the second Quebec Conference (September, 1944), Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., argued for the deindustrialization of Germany and its transformation wholly into an agricultural state. Churchill, among others, objected that in practice the result would be mass starvation and genocide. Roosevelt, at first favorably inclined, backed away as details leaked to the public during the presidential campaign. All the same, American policy makers never formulated any clear alternative to Morgenthau's vision. Agreements among the Big Three on reparations and occupation policy immediately after the war would be in fact loosely consistent with it.

Many of these issues would reemerge at the Yalta Conference (February, 1945), the second and final meeting of the "Big Three" leaders—Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. (The conference decisions on issues relating to the war in the Pacific and the Far East will be covered in Lesson Plan 4 of this unit.) With Soviet troops pushing into eastern Germany and US-British forces fighting in the border areas of western Germany, the end of the war was in sight. European decisions took on a special urgency.

Poland was the critical test case. The conferees reaffirmed the decision—first reached at the Tehran Conference—that Poland's eastern boundary would be relocated to the west. They further agreed that the Poles would receive German territory in compensation, but did not precisely specify the new Polish western boundary. They also agreed that the pro-Soviet Polish government established at Lublin would be reorganized to give representation to all democratic Polish factions. World War II had started with the Nazi invasion of Poland, giving both the United States and Great Britain a special interest in that nation's reestablishment as a liberal-democratic state. The large Polish-American vote in the United States underscored that interest in a way that no American political leader could ignore.

Poland was equally a test case for the rest of Eastern Europe and here also various ethnic voting blocs in the United States could not be disregarded. The conference issued a Declaration on Liberated Europe, promising representative governments and free elections but providing no specific procedures or timelines.

Another contentious issue was that of German reparations. The Soviets wanted huge payments from Germany on top of whatever "war booty" they seized. The US and Britain both felt that the issue of German reparations had destabilized the world politically and economically after World War I. The conference established a commission to study the problem.

Finally, the three leaders seemed to reach agreement on voting and discussion procedures for the new United Nations Security Council. Roosevelt and Churchill also secretly assented to separate UN membership for the two Soviet "republics" most ravaged by the war—Byelorussia and the Ukraine.

Despite President Roosevelt's upbeat report on Yalta to Congress and the American people, key agreements, especially those pertaining to Poland, quickly unwound. Roosevelt's sudden death (April 12, 1945) complicated the situation. His successor, Harry S. Truman, demanded Soviet compliance on the promise of democratic politics in Poland. Faced with the arrest of Polish leaders and Soviet questioning of UN voting procedures at the San Francisco conference, Truman sent Harry Hopkins to Moscow to meet with Stalin. Hopkins could not undo the increasing Soviet dominance in Poland, but he did achieve Stalin's agreement to go ahead with the establishment of the United Nations. By then, the USSR was also moving to control other nations covered by the Declaration on Liberated Europe.

The final Big Three meeting (Potsdam, July 17-August 2, 1945) would achieve resolution of none of these issues, although its closing communiqué put as good a face as possible on the results. A decade later, Europe would be divided between a Western Bloc with the United States and Britain at its core (NATO) and a Soviet Bloc (the Warsaw Pact). (See 1956 map of Europe, accessible via the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet Public Library.) One can only ponder whether the Grand Alliance might somehow have endured after the war with different leadership, or was naturally fated to dissolve in the manner of the many victorious alliances of the past.

Preparation Instructions

Review the lesson plan. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and links from EDSITEment-reviewed websites used in this lesson. Download and print out selected documents and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing. Alternatively, excerpted versions of these documents are available as part of the downloadable PDF.

Download the Text Document for this lesson, available here as a PDF. This file contains excerpted versions of the documents used in the first and second activities, as well as questions for students to answer. Print out and make an appropriate number of copies of the handouts you plan to use in class.

Teachers have several options as to how to organize this reading and analyzing of documents:

Students can be assigned individually (perhaps for homework) to read and analyze all the documents using any or all of the four "Document Analysis Charts."

Or, the class can be divided into four groups, with each one assigned a particular question and "Document Analysis Chart" to use in class, and then share their findings with their classmates in writing or orally. The teacher might also consider using the jigsaw method, where groups work in two steps-during the second step new groups are formed by bringing together at least one member of each of the original groups so that each new group draws on the work of each of the original groups.

Another possibility is to skip the sharing step and instead move immediately to Activity #2, with each of the four groups making their case on the debate topic (see below) based only on an analysis of the documents from the perspective of their question and "Document Analysis Chart." In this approach, group perspectives would widen as the debate itself unfolds: beginning by looking only at one issue, each group would discover that other groups had developed a different perspective or a different rationale for the same perspective from the same set of documents but by focusing on a different question. (Note that this approach could also be used if students read the documents as individuals but had not done so in light of all four questions.)

The teacher may choose to focus group discussion on any number of the appropriate questions listed in the evaluation section below. In fact, several of these can be reshaped into further debate topics or to replace the topic in Activity #2 (e.g., by turning them into a controversial statement, such as "The Grand Alliance was based on pragmatism rather than principle. This was the only way to win the world war.").

Activity 2. Debate

"Did the U.S. compromise its ideals as it concluded the war against the Axis and planned for a post-war world in 1944-45?" This activity will encourage students to take a position on this question and defend it based on the documents they have read. They should also be encouraged to use any insights gained from the map "The Military Lines of Control in Europe during the Yalta Conference, February, 1945" (click on "February 1945—Yalta Conference" in the upper-left-hand corner). Students will then debate their positions with one another in groups or as individuals.

Teachers have several options as to how to organize and conduct the debate:

One option is outlined above in Activity 1, where groups (or individuals) skip the step of sharing the results of their document analysis and move immediately to a debate. Again, this approach widens student perspectives on this issue in the course of the debate itself. Each initial position on the debate question is thus guaranteed to be missing parts of the bigger picture and therefore must be reconsidered and likely revised or even rejected in the course of the debate itself.

If students have read and analyzed all the documents as individuals or in groups that have shared their results, they should then organize themselves into new groups based on their answer to the debate question posed above.

Several possible answers to the question, "Did the U.S. compromise its ideals as it concluded the war against the Axis and planned for a post-war world in 1944-45?" may be grouped roughly as follows (teachers may share any or all of these possibilities with students if they are having trouble formulating their own positions):

"Yes, the U.S. compromised its ideals and did so unnecessarily."

"Yes, the U.S. compromised its ideals, but only insofar as it needed to in order to win the war."

"Yes, the U.S. compromised its ideals, but these ideals were unrealistic from the beginning."

"No, the U.S. did not compromise its ideals."

"No, the U.S. did not compromise its ideals, but it should have in order to deal more realistically with winning the war and establishing the peace."

When the debate draws to a conclusion, the teacher might do one of several things:

Poll students to see if the debate changed their original opinion on the debate topic.

Ask all students what specific evidence particularly compelled them to change or not to change their original position.

Raise one or more of the questions listed in the "Assessment" section below for further discussion.

Assessment

After completing this lesson, students should be able to write essays answering several of the following questions, depending upon the teacher's particular emphases and upon the level of the students:

In what ways did FDR and Truman differ in their approach to Stalin and the Soviet Union? What accounts for these differences?

Do you believe that FDR was a pragmatist or an idealist in his dealings with the Soviet Union with regards to a post-war settlement for Eastern Europe and especially Poland? How did political considerations play a role in his decisions? Cite relevant evidence from the documents.

Why did the allies believe that the future of Germany was such an important issue that it had to be resolved internationally rather than by the Germans themselves? Did the allies differ as to goals or ways to reach their goals? Explain.

Why was the fate of Poland so important to each of the members of the Grand Alliance?

The Atlantic Charter became the agreed-upon statement of principle for the Grand Alliance. In what ways were the various proposals for and actions regarding Eastern Europe-running from Poland in the north to Greece in the south-tests of and challenges to these principles? How did the various alliance members seek to justify their own proposals or to change the actions of other members of the alliance?

What role did FDR see the United Nations and international cooperation playing in the maintenance of world peace after the war had ended? What role was the US to play in these international organizations? Why did he believe that this was the best way to prevent future wars?

Although Stalin formally endorsed the principles of the Grand Alliance as set forth in the Atlantic Charter and the UN Declaration, did he appear to look to the Grand Alliance for or even trust it with the future security of the USSR and the maintenance of world peace? Explain why or why not. What might explain his formal adherence to these plans?

As victory in Europe was secured and new governments were set up in the wake of the victorious Red Army in Eastern Europe, it was increasingly clear that the Grand Alliance was falling apart. Was this an inevitable outcome because of the very nature of such "coalitions of convenience" to fight a common foe or could better leadership have preserved the Grand Alliance?

Why did the various allied plans for the post-war future of Germany create a tension between the practical goal of preventing Germany from causing a third world war and the high moral principles of the Grand Alliance, such as set forth in the Atlantic Charter? How were these tensions resolved? Was the solution a victory for principle or for pragmatism? Explain.

There are those who say that the western allies, and especially the US, failed to stand up at Yalta and Potsdam to the increasing Soviet domination of liberated Eastern European states such as Poland; others, however, point to the fact that these areas were firmly under Soviet control and therefore beyond the help of the US or Britain. Given your reading of the diplomatic documents and your knowledge of the military situation, do you think there was a point at which the western allies lost the ability to save freed Eastern Europe nations from control by a new master? Explain.

Teachers might consider using a "lottery bowl' container and put in numbers that correspond to the questions listed below. Students can work individually or in groups, and do so in class or as homework. Students would take turns drawing numbers and then being give a copy of the question and either responding orally or writing at the time or being given time to develop answers—as homework.

Related Lessons

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Although it was the Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, U.S. military planners decided that Germany, not Japan, was to be the primary target of operations. This lesson plan will focus on the overall strategies pursued by the Americans and their British allies in the initial months of World War II in Europe.